Apple Pay UK Announcement Imminent At WWDC 2015

It’s now less than 24 hours until Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference goes live in San Francisco, and with rumors and guesswork about to be either proven or dis-proven, things are starting to get interesting.

One rumor that hasn’t been too prevalent has Apple launching Apple Pay internationally during its WWDC opening keynote, with the U.K. set to be the first country outside the United States to receive Apple’s mobile payment system. News today has started to lend weight to the idea of Apple Pay making its way to the UK after a report from The Telegraph appeared to suggest that such a thing may be on the cards within just a couple of months.

Citing Mike Cowan, a Senior VP at MasterCard, The Telegraph says that Apple Pay is on the verge of making the move beyond the U.S. borders, with the U.K. set to be the beneficiary. Existing rumors had Apple Pay arriving some time in the first half of the year for those in the U.K, and that now looks to have been right on the money – horid pun, we know.

Weighing in on the news, 9to5Mac also believes that Lloyds and Santander will be two of Apple Pay launch partners in UK, though it is unclear as yet as to whether they are the only two. Given the lack of HSBC and Barclays on that list, we’d have to assume not.

Beyond Apple Pay’s expansion, WWDC is expected to bring early betas of both iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11, with a new version of the Apple Watch OS also a likely arrival. Apple has already confirmed that the new, native Apple Watch SDK is going to get an outing at the event, so we would be surprised if no new Apple Watch software came with it. We’ve been surprised before, though!

WWDC gets under way at 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern on Monday morning, so with the hours ticking on down we can’t wait to see what we learn. Here’s hoping for a ‘one more thing!’